Emeryville’s planning director announced on Thursday that Onni, the corporate developer of a 54 story 650 foot residential tower proposed for Christie Avenue has withdrawn their application to build after refusing to pay fees associated with the project. Facing an aroused and generally displeased resident community, the ill fated 638 unit all rental Onni project faced several hurdles, including newly formed Emeryville family housing regulations that would preclude such a project. However, an Emeryville City Hall employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Tattler the death knell for the controversial project ultimately came as a result of Onni’s poor relations among local Bay Area labor unions and their unwillingness to work with them on this project.
The Canadian based Onni has become a major developer in Southern California, especially Los Angeles where the company has more than 8000 housing units in the pipeline, primarily in the downtown area. The developer is facing increasing labor backlash as a result of unfair practices there as well, putting some of the projects in jeopardy with a city hall not wishing to stoke labor strife in that city. Meanwhile, in Seattle, Onni has recently cancelled a residential project because of COVID they say. Here in Emeryville, Onni has not yet announced their reasons for the withdraw of the project.
Onni watchers started getting suspicious that all was not well with the Christie Avenue project as the Planning Department’s predictions for the Environmental Impact Report publishing, initially slated for March, kept getting delayed. By June, staffers had stopped predicting the Onni EIR timeline altogether. The developer needed to complete the EIR for the project to move forward.
There is still a possibility Onni could re-apply for this project but that is widely seen as a non-starter at City Hall. Onni did not return calls to the Tattler for this story.
Hard to Miss The Onni project would have been more than twice as tall as Emeryville's next tallest building.
City Council Listed as Responsible Party to Protect
Emeryville Citizens
An employee with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) turned whistleblower has notified the City of Emeryville that he will be submitting a citizen complaint with the United States Attorney’s office for the Northern District of California, alleging fraudulent practices of a DTSC staff member related to regulatory oversight at the Emeryville Sherwin-Williams toxic brownfields cleanup site. Speaking as a private citizen, in a June 29th letter to the City of Emeryville and City Council, the former Sherwin-Williams project manager and current DTSC employee, Tom Price said the department has a “corruption problem” related to this toxic site and that the public may ultimately be exposed to toxins at the future residential site as a result.
Toxic soil being removed at the Sherwin Williams site.
Mr. Price filed complaints with state overseers against DTSC staff starting back in August 2019 regarding what he called bogus sampling plans and inadequate investigation and cleanup of volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and SVOCs). At the time, Mr Price charged DTSC officials of working with improper regulatory oversight, hand in glove with the residential developer of the site, Lennar Multi-Family Communities, a charge he is continuing in his impending complaint with the feds.
The impending citizen complaint by Mr. Price, who has protective whistleblower status under Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, include complaints already made against the state-issued professional licenses of five DTSC employees, including an engineer, Jose Salcedo, whom he says “inappropriately approved site development documents” at Sherwin Williams since proper investigation and cleanup were skipped. Former DTSC Northern California Division Chief of the Site Mitigation and Restoration Program, Mark Malinowski is also named in the citizen complaint for what Mr. Price says amounts to a cajoling of DTSC staff to inappropriately approve development plans with inadequate technical evaluations and attempting to deprive future residents of the honest regulatory oversight services which DTSC normally provides.
Mr. Malinowski has since reported to be retired although the DTSC appears to be using his services in some consultancy capacity.
Regardless of the misconduct of DTSC managers noted by Tom Price up until this point, the former project manager told the City Council it is not too late to properly clean up the site. He said the City of Emeryville, with its authority over a grading permit which was issued to the developer, should direct DTSC to require the developer to investigate and/or excavate potentially contaminated soils from hundreds of feet of abandoned utility lines on the site that were identified on old maps from the days when Sherwin Williams was engaging in pesticide and paints manufacturing. Writing as a private citizen in his letter to the City and the Council, Mr. Price recommended bringing a mobile laboratory to the site to complete the investigation with screening of soil gas samples for VOCs and SVOCs in the locations of the abandoned utility lines and former tanks which correspond to the planned living spaces which have not been tested yet. Mr Price named DTSC senior staff in Southern California including Shahir Haddad and Theodore Johnson, who conducted a review of site documents and identified those deficiencies yet, he noted, they failed to recommend customary investigation and cleanup.
Speaking as a private citizen to potential risks at the Emeryville Sherwin Williams site, former project manager Price told the Tattler, “According to guidance documents of DTSC and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a vapor intrusion mitigation system such as the one planned for this site should not be considered a substitute for appropriate investigation and remediation. If that is skipped, the long-term protectiveness of the remedy may be compromised. That is unacceptable because these residential buildings will house sensitive receptors including pregnant women and children for decades.”
Mr. Price’s professional experience includes conducting dozens of such field investigations as a field chemist at former industrial sites and service stations across Northern California. It was noted Branch Chief Richard Hume of DTSC's Sacramento office has not responded to Mr. Price's requests for the additional investigation and cleanup of the site which has a history of being one of the most polluted sites under DTSC oversight in the region.
A long-term DTSC employee and Sherwin Williams project manager from May of 2018 to October 2019, Tom Price used the June 29th letter to the City of Emeryville and the Council to inform them that the people of Emeryville, especially the future residents at the Sherwin-Williams site, deserve the honest and professional services of the Department of Toxic Substance Control and they have not received it. The City and the Council have not yet responded to Mr Price's letter.
After his attempts to provide appropriate regulatory oversight for the project were unsuccessful due to reported interference from Mr. Malinowski, former Northern California Division Chief of the Site Mitigation and Restoration Program at DTSC, Tom Price requested to be transferred off of the Sherwin-Williams cleanup, a request that was accepted. He remains an employee at the department.
The Sherwin-Williams residential project will have land use restrictions owing to the toxins that will remain on the site.
The apartments being constructed, including many 'family friendly' units, will be ready for occupancy some time in 2022.
A new park adjacent to the residences will be separated from toxic soil by a geotechnical cloth product according to the DTSC cleanup plan.
A 1996 video from the UC Graduate School of Journalism (above) presupposed that underground toxins in Emeryville would be contained in a good faith manner. They didn't count on the Department of Toxic Substances Control, a government agency tasked with regulating private sector developers and polluters, would be in bed with the very organizations it is supposed to regulate. It's a classic case of 'regulatory capture'.
